10/7/2009

most of the universities on this list were the product of the US Occupation education reforms, particularly the insistence on public universities in every prefecture.

In a sense, that was true, but it was a list of the top 500 global institutions, and there were 37 Japanese representatives. The top seven were the former Imperial universities: Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Tohoku, Nagoya, Hokkaido, Kyushu. Somehow I didn’t actually make that connection until looking at the Times Higher EducationTop 200 global institutions [via], which included more or less the same list:

22. Tokyo

25. Kyoto

43. Osaka

55. Tokyo Institute of Technology (which was just below the Imperials on the old list)

92. Nagoya

97. Tohoku

142. Keio (Keio and Waseda did better in the THE lists than the old ones)

148. Waseda

155. Kyushu

171. Hokkaido

174. Tsukuba

Without a detailed look at methodology, it’s not easy to tell if the differences are substantial, but the strength of the technical schools (TIT, Tsukuba) and the private academies (KO, Waseda) was interesting.